And since one rule the group came up with for the project was to keep his weird look strictly legal, Mundschau grew out his own facial hair rather than wear a wig to look the part -- which took him a month.

Daniel Mundschau grew out his facial hair for a month.(Photo: Daniel Mundschau)

"I had some police officer friends that I ran it by," Mundschau said. "We didn't want to break the law."

The Facebook group also came up with the idea for his maniacally staring eyes, he said. "It adds a creepy level" to the look, he said.

Shave a little male-pattern baldness into his look, thin out the beard, pull the head back to create a double-chin, and voila!

"It was like Christmas when it came in the mail," Mundschau wrote on a Imgur post a few weeks ago chronicling the story behind the license photo (which appeared on the front page of Reddit).

Instant celebrity

Once Mundschau received his official Indiana driver's license with the staged photo, he told me, the fun REALLY started!

Mundschau was pulled over three times by police officers, but his photo on his license was never a problem, he said. The first cop "didn't bat an eye," though the other officers did need to give him a second look, he said.

On the other hand, "if I got carded, the license would get passed around," he said -- which earned him a certain amount of celebrity.

"At Applebee's, the manager would see me having drinks and send a server to card me and see their reactions," Mundschau said.

The only real problem Mundschau said the license photo caused him was at Walgreen's. There, the clerk would refuse to sell him a six-pack of beer because his license looked like a fake ID, he said.